


If I know what's nice, I won't even tell myself

by chainofclovers



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, Pining, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 18:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14478288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: It’s worth almost anything to have the house back, to have a home again, to see Grace energized.





	If I know what's nice, I won't even tell myself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fictorium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/gifts).



> This story is a very delayed response to a tumblr prompt from damelola: _"It is only September./ I don’t know how many seasons / I will be allowed to love you yet." Megan Falley - another G &F prompt to give you options, like ;)_
> 
> It was going to be a short little thing, and it turned into this slightly longer little thing! Hope you enjoy.

It’s worth almost anything to have the house back, to have a home again, to see Grace energized. Whenever the guilt and resentment start to bubble up inside her, Frankie reminds herself that it was easy for Nick to buy out the beach house’s first buyer, purchase the house himself, turn around and sell it to Grace for a pittance, complete the remaining repairs with a wave of his hand, navigate legal precautions to prevent any of the kids from complicating Grace and Frankie’s return. Nick is so rich that he could have spent twice or three times as much and it wouldn’t have mattered. He’s so rich that for him money is theoretical, tangible only as language of negotiation. 

(“Hey, be nice,” Grace told her a couple weeks ago, indignant because she was off to meet Nick for a dinner date and Frankie wouldn’t help her choose between two pairs of earrings, had suggested instead that she simply make Nick buy her new ones while they were out. “Nick thought we’d be better off in a one-story Craftsman, but he did this for us anyway.” _For you_ , Frankie had retorted. Silently, in her head. _He did this for you._ Grace put on earrings, and Frankie said “Oh, the ones that make you look like an alien,” and sulked off to her studio for the rest of the night.) 

Deep down, Frankie knows she isn’t guilty because of the money. Grace doesn’t look like an alien; Grace looks like her perfect human.

It’s not all bad, sharing Grace again. It’s not like she was out of practice—between escaping Walden Villas and the start of Nick’s scheme to restore Grace to her rightful place, there were all of what, thirty-six chaste but passionate hours at a Holiday Inn? And Grace glows, Grace smiles. She’d missed the ocean, missed her kitchen, missed having a boyfriend. Some mornings, when Nick has stayed over, Grace bounds into Frankie’s studio, gives her a hug if she’s already at the easel, even though she once got paint on her pale pink cardigan doing just that. She perches on the edge of the bed if Frankie’s still asleep, jostles her awake. “Come on, have breakfast with us,” she says, and drags Frankie back to the main house. Once upon a time, Grace stole an entire date with Nick, used it on Frankie instead, pulled her across a clearing and towards a balloon. Said “go.” Meant “stay.” Propelled Frankie into a decision she regrets daily. 

Now Grace doesn’t abandon a date with Nick for anything. She invites Frankie to the day after instead, and she and Frankie sit on tall chairs at the kitchen island while Nick pours their coffee and makes them eggs. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Nick is extremely invested in providing egg-based breakfasts, makes elaborate omelettes, very competent poached eggs on toast, fluffy scrambled eggs doused in hot sauce. When he branches out to Eggs Benedict, Grace tries to set Frankie at ease. “No meat at my request,” she says, flashing the affectionate grin that used to mean everything but now makes Frankie feel like she’s being humored. “Because of you, mainly, but also because I think Canadian bacon is disgusting.”

Frankie doesn’t even pretend she’s vegan anymore. She’s just a weak vegetarian who loves dairy. She’s just a woman hitting a new self-esteem low while her soulmate’s boyfriend perfects a Hollandaise. 

It’s not like Frankie has nothing going on. Besides spending time with Grace, she makes the rounds to her old haunts and old friends, still novel after months spent being various types of away. She moderates the Vybrant online community, which she loves. She packages eight million vibrators a day, which she hates. She works on her latest paintings, a series of ironic pink landscapes: the desert as the divine feminine, then the desert as one big snake. Her studio is a project in and of itself—it was repainted plain white and stripped of all personality before the house sold, and each day she reclaims a little more of the space. She buys a bigger and more comfortable bed, tells herself the purchase is a gift for her back. She organizes and reorganizes her art supplies, beats back the self-directed rage she feels when she remembers doing this after Sheree moved out. Grace has lost this place once, but Frankie’s lost it twice. (Regret. Every day.)

Still, Frankie wastes most of Eggs Benedict day, and by nightfall, she sits alone on the couch, thinks she might die if Grace doesn’t sit down next to her within the next ten minutes. It’s 8:50, and they have plans to watch TV together around nine. But Grace is on the phone with Nick, wandering room to room as she talks. She’s already put on a face mask. She’s still in dress pants but wears a sweatshirt, which means Nick called while she was changing. “—three times already this week,” Grace says, the first part muffled by distance but easy enough to guess. A pause. “But it’s only Friday. Weeks start on Monday.” She paces the hallway, pauses at the threshold to the living room, glances at Frankie. “Look,” she says. “I have plans with Frankie. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Grace cringes at whatever Nick says next, and her voice softens around the goodbye. 

“Okay,” Grace says brightly, as soon as she’s off the phone. She points at her face. “Let me just wash this off and call Brianna to yell at her about micellar water. I’ll be back really soon, promise.” 

Brianna Hanson isn’t Frankie’s favorite person these days, but Frankie sends her good vibes anyway. She’ll need them. This afternoon, Grace had come home from Target and pulled a bottle of micellar water out of the reusable shopping bag Frankie’d left in the car for her. “I bought this for five dollars, Frankie,” she said. “It works great, doesn’t irritate my eyes, blah blah blah, I don’t need to stand here selling it to you. You know what Say Grace _still_ doesn’t sell?” She shook the bottle emphatically. “Say you get free shipping at $50 and your cart has $42 in it, and the internet can tell you’re purchasing mascara and moisturizer, both of which go on a fucking face, and so the site suggests you add a nine dollar bottle of incredibly trendy, incredibly popular, decently affordable micellar water. Do you go for it? Yes, you go for it.” 

Frankie had told her she understood why Grace was putting so much energy into forgiving Brianna, but wanted to better understand why she’d decided to put significant time and money into fixing Say Grace. “We don’t know how long we get,” Grace said, and the way she said it sent a chill flashing down Frankie’s spine. Grace is all about feeling young again, about going back in time. It had been awhile since Frankie witnessed her looking in the other direction. “I want to see her succeed.”

Grace comes back at 9:10, which is close enough to nine, and anyway, there’s hardly a historical precedent to justify Frankie becoming the punctuality police. Grace sighs, the sound of tension leaving her body, flops down close to Frankie. They have a routine, and it starts with that sigh. Next they discuss what they want to watch, faux-argue over whose turn it is to pick, decide together regardless, and while they talk, Grace massages Frankie’s sore shoulders, and Frankie rubs her thumb against Grace’s bad knee. They shift closer and closer so that when the show starts, it’s easy for Grace to drop her grip on Frankie’s shoulders and pull one blanket over both their bodies, simplicity itself to slump together, sleepy and warm. 

Tonight, when the blanket’s in place and the show has started, Frankie doesn’t stick to the slump, to the pleasant passivity of not letting go. She expands her reach, and could cite everything as a reason, not least the way Grace sounded this afternoon when she said “fucking face,” the way she feels soft against Frankie now that she’s replaced her trousers with her favorite grey yoga pants, the way her skin post-face mask is smooth and a little shiny in the light from the TV. Frankie’s spent an entire lifetime trying to be casual, but it’s come down to this: she’s scared to die without more. She reaches across her own body and touches Grace’s knee with her left hand, so as not to abandon it, and trails her right hand up and down Grace’s back. “This all right?” she asks, though to say that is to introduce the possibility that it might not be all right. 

Grace nods. Frankie sweeps her fingers higher, teases at the bare skin just above the crew neck of the sweatshirt, presses against the back of Grace’s neck. “Harder,” Grace gasps. The word feels involuntary, makes both of them draw breath. It’s the expression of a need—explainable, contextual, but a need all the same. 

“Okay, honey,” Frankie says, massaging her neck in earnest. “You’re tight here. Does this hurt?”

The firmer touch makes Grace breathe audibly, makes her grab Frankie’s left hand and pull it up to her thigh. “Keep going.” 

“Okay,” Frankie says again. “Your skin feels so soft,” she whispers as she rubs. The blanket and the dark conspire to prevent her from seeing Grace fully, but she’s spent so much time thinking of every inch of her that she hardly needs to see. By the memory of sight, by proximity, she knows the jut of Grace’s hip bones, the little swell of her stomach. She’s guessed at the weight and texture of her breasts, has imagined her body with such vivid attention that she’s ended up miles ahead of herself, miles ahead of Grace. “You look—” _Nice_ , Frankie’s brain suggests. _Like you’ll sleep well tonight_. “You look beautiful.” 

Grace closes her eyes. Her hand trembles against Frankie’s, and she bites her lower lip, as if to hold back a moan. She looks like she’s gone someplace else, like she’s alone. She shifts her hips, just a little, and Frankie imagines trailing her fingers up, touching between Grace’s legs, giving her something to press against, giving her all the good feelings Grace goes elsewhere to get. Grace gasps again. “I’m cheating on Nick,” she says, opening her eyes to look at Frankie, her lips parted in what looks like fear or awe. Frankie pulls her hands away. “Right now,” Grace clarifies. “With you.” 

“Grace—”

“Oh my God,” Grace says. “Oh my God.”

 _I don’t want to mess things up for you_ , Frankie’s unhelpful brain prompts her to say, but there’s no way in hell she’ll tell a whopper of that magnitude. Grace is panicking, though; Frankie needs to say something. “You’re my favorite.”

Grace’s chin wobbles. “You’re my favorite, too.” 

Frankie’s stomach hurts. She thinks, briefly and wildly, that it wouldn’t make sense to waste this misery, that she might as well be all the way honest. “I’d kind of thought we chose each other,” she says. “The day we ran away?”

“We did,” Grace says. “But—” She clasps her hand over her mouth. Takes it away again when Frankie doesn’t speak. “Oh my God, I made you both eat breakfast with me so many times.” 

“Well, we love you,” Frankie says. It’s surprisingly natural to speak for both herself and Nick. She knows she’s right: she loves Grace, and so does he. She’s watched Nick refill Grace’s coffee, watch her eat what he’s made with a smile on his face. He’s cocky and breezy and too slick, and they got off to a terrible start, but Nick isn’t a bad guy. He’s warm around Grace; Grace isn’t the only one who glows.

“Nick hasn’t said it,” Grace admits. “I think—I think he knows I won’t say it back.”

“Why won’t you?”

“Because I don’t know how to feel yet. I never get any answers, you know? He makes me feel great, but I can’t predict the future.” Grace swallows. “It’s like—it’s like I can’t see him clearly. When we’re together, I think that’s what I want, but then I wake up and I’m not thinking about him, I’m thinking—” Their legs are touching, and Frankie feels Grace stiffen. “Frankie? What are you thinking about?”

“About how I already lost this house twice.” This is not a heterosexual blanket, or a heterosexual couch, or a heterosexual reaction to a routine massage. She knows it, and she thinks Grace knows it too, but she’s not going to be stupid this time. She refuses to let Grace’s ambiguity fill her with hope. Frankie can see it now: Nick will move in, and Frankie will go from studio-dweller to official third wheel. When that happens, she might as well return to Walden Villas for all Grace will care. 

“I lost it twice, too. Once when you left, and once when we both did.” 

Frankie remembers then—she’d forgotten for only a minute, two minutes tops—that the kids aren’t the only people Grace has tried to forgive this year. She’s the recipient of a different version of the same gift. They’re both quiet then. It’s overly hot under the blanket, but Frankie’s too uncomfortable to move. After a few minutes, they both start to speak. Frankie chuckles. “Go ahead.”

“I was going to say I don’t think I can talk to you about this yet.”

Yet. “I was gonna suggest we save this show for another time, smoke some dope, put on a movie instead.”

“Sure,” Grace says. She sounds distracted. “Just for now.”

The next day is a Saturday, and Frankie doesn’t work, doesn’t paint. She runs errands instead, finds the perfect stringed lights for her studio. When she’s home, she uses a staple gun to affix the lights to the walls, thinks _I live here_ with every clack. 

She doesn’t see Grace until it’s late at night and she’s sitting bundled up in her comfortable bed, reading under perfect light. Her phone buzzes against the nightstand. It’s a text from Grace: _Don’t want to startle you but I’m outside the door. Can I come in?_

 _Yeah door’s open_ , Frankie types. The door immediately opens. Frankie hears Grace lock it behind her, walk slowly to the bedroom.

“You shouldn’t leave the door unlocked all the time,” Grace says, standing to the side of Frankie’s bed. She looks very prepared—for what, Frankie doesn’t know. She wears her purple silk pajamas, her beige cardigan. She hasn’t washed her face yet, but she’s taken out her contacts and put on glasses. She holds a vodka rocks, a novel, a toiletries bag—the Grace Hanson survival kit. 

“You don’t carry a studio key, do you? How else are you supposed to wake me up in the mornings?”

“Oh.” Grace smiles tentatively, as if her face has consented only to try it out. “Can I sit down?”

“Yeah.” 

Grace sits on top of the covers with her legs crossed. Faces the headboard, faces Frankie. Sets the book and the toiletries bag on the nightstand. Holds onto the drink. “I’ve had all this energy lately,” she says. “I thought it was from Nick.” 

“But?”

“But it wasn’t.” She sighs. “It’s from being home with you.” 

“And from starting your day with protein,” Frankie points out, the joke slipping out on auto-pilot. “I should share the credit with all those eggs.”

Grace rolls her eyes, and it seems to put them back on more solid ground. But then her smile disappears, and she stares into Frankie’s eyes. The way Grace sits has pulled the covers tight, and Frankie can’t push the comforter down without the gesture seeming to dismiss Grace. She folds the edge of the heavy blanket back on the side nearest the wall, where Grace isn’t sitting, lets in a sliver of air. “What’d you do today?” Frankie asks. 

“The internet,” Grace says, like a confession. She swallows. “Talked to Sheree. Talked to Nick.” She brings a hand to her neck. Takes it away again. “I won’t tell you the whole break-up story right now, but…”

Frankie reaches out, places a hand on Grace’s shin. “Honey.” 

Grace smiles again, thin and tight this time. “It’s okay.” There’s a very long pause, and Frankie begs herself not to fill it, delivers a silencing bite to her bottom lip, watches Grace drink. “I think there’s probably a lot of queer things about me.”

Happiness and terror flame in Frankie, each a perfect match. “I know,” she says. “Me too.”

“I know. I guess I’m gonna find out what they are?” 

“That sounds wonderful.” It does sound wonderful. It sounds sexy and scary and exciting. It sounds like not holding back, maybe for the first time ever. 

“I did choose you, Frankie. That day we left Walden Villas. I’m here now. For—for whatever choosing you means.” She puts her hand on top of Frankie’s. It’s cold from where she’d been holding her glass with both hands. The temperature change is a relief. 

Frankie glances at Grace’s bag and book, accessories for staying over. Grace isn’t here to pull Frankie somewhere else. This is her arrival method, her way of asking to stay. In a second, Frankie will nudge Grace closer, wrestle with the bedclothes, make the invitation clear, start to make this new bed a home within home. For now, they’re quiet and still, guiltless hand on guiltless hand. No longer slumped together, pretending solace is enough. Upright instead, ready for more.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Cate le Bon song "Aside From Growing Old."


End file.
